Arcane Effect: 101 Ways To Wizard
by ThatBlueScreenGuy
Summary: Being a man of magic in a world of science is never easy, and has more near-death experiences than one would think. But Michael Blackstone takes what comes and keeps on going. Some would say it's because he's stubborn. Others prefer the term pig headed. But really, when thrown into a world of crazy, Michael just wants to show you how it's done. Wizard style. (Companion Story)
1. Introduction, and a Forword

It was a nice, calm day down at my office.

That should have been the first clue.

The second clue should have been that I hadn't a sufficient case in weeks, and my rent was coming due. Sure, that left me with time to practice my budding wizardly skills, but being able to blow shit up with my mind would lose its luster if I found myself homeless.

The third, and probably most prominent clue as to the fact that my shit was about to be pushed in was most definitely the large, imposing man that had stepped into my office that afternoon, decked out in full combat-hardsuit gear with a rifle strapped to his back and a pistol at his hip.

He ambled into my office, casually casting his eyes around the entire place, as calm and collected as a man who didn't look like he was about to raid an incredibly fortified military base. He stopped a few feet short of my desk, a simple (and probably subconscious) act that gave him enough room to roll in either direction away from should I pull a gun, and landed his eyes on me, asking, "So, you the wizard?"

He was big, maybe an inch or two under my towering height of 'near-six-and-a-half-feet', and was much more well built, as far as muscle went. Dark skin, a buzzed haircut, blue eyes that seemed to shine with equal parts humor and danger, and a smile that seemed to be his face's natural relaxed state, the guy was certainly a handsome one. If I were a lesser man, I might've felt insecure about my own looks compared to his.

Thankfully, I'm not a lesser man, and I simply answered his question without trying to prove my obvious alpha male dominance. "Would I have put the word on the door otherwise?" I might or might not have sounded a bit condescending. It was certainly not an attempt to try and show my obviously superior rapier wit.

His eyes gleamed with extra amounts of humor. "All kinds of weirdness out there."

"Says the man who walked into a guy's office asking for a wizard."

His retort was quick. "Says the one who's _advertising_ as a wizard."

I squinted my eyes at him in scrutiny, then decided that I just couldn't hate that disarming smile of his. I leaned back in my chair, bobbing my head in allowance. "Fair enough." I looked back at his face. "Weirdness is something of a specialty of mine." I stuck my hand out, over my desk. "Michael Blackstone, wizard for hire."

The large man stared at my hand for a moment, as though contemplating whether or not it was worth it to come over and shake. After a moment, he did, saying, "Ryan, professional bounty hunter."

I quirked an eyebrow. "Just Ryan?" I asked.

He nodded. "Just Ryan."

Our hands went back to our sides, and I motioned towards one of the spare seats I had in my office. "Sit?"

He shook his head. "Prefer to stand."

I shrugged. Suit yourself, big guy. "So," I said, "what can I do for you?"

He thought for a moment, folding his arms as he did so. After a second of silence, he said. "First, I need you to tell me. Just how much of that 'magic' stuff that you push do you actually believe?"

Interesting question. He was trying to see if, when he said the real reason for what he was in here for, I would just call him crazy, or actually believe him about it. Must mean that he really _did_ see something that might need my help. What little I could offer with my current skill set, anyway.

My answer came with no hesitation. "All of it."

Ryan scanned my face, trying to weed out the possibility that I might be lying. "You ever hear of someone that can get into someone's mind and shit? Make you do things without your sayso?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I've heard of it. Actually, there are a lot of things out there that can do that. The human mind is a fragile thing, and some monsters adapted specifically to use mankind as both food and willing beasts of burden."

The big man shook his head. "Well, I don't know much about any monsters, but I do know that I was hired to hunt down this guy that pissed off the locals, who just so happens to be able to do some strange things."

I furrowed my brow. "Who?"

"Guy named Vissarion Yankov. C-Sec wants this guy because they can pin a series of robberies and murders on 'im. They called me in for some extra help."

"What's this got to with mind control?"

A frustrated look crossed Ryan's face. "I've been hunting this guy for the past three weeks. I've cornered him at least three times. Each time, he's been able to slip me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But three times?" He shook his head. "The first time I cornered him, I found him at this old, rundown bar. I walk up to him, say the whole 'dead or alive, you're coming with me' thing, then wait for him to say something back. But he doesn't. He just looks at me. And then I turn around and left. No mess, no fight, not even a good old 'go screw yourself' from the guy. He just looked at me, and I was suddenly walkin' towards the door."

My eyebrows went up, surprised. "He got into your head? With a look?" _That_ was new. I knew of things that could give suggestions, at _best_, with just a look, let alone a compulsion or even total mind control like that. Whoever this Vissarion guy is, he knows what he's doing.

Ryan nodded. "I was twenty feet outside the bar when I felt that something was wrong. Took another five minutes to just snap myself out of it. When I went back in to find the guy, he was already gone."

"Ye Gods, man," I said shaking my head. "You're lucky that you _were _able to snap out of it. Most things that can exert control like that don't usually have such weak holds on their victims minds. I think he _let _you go."

Ryan seemed to consider that for a moment. "Well, that's a scary thought. And, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not think about it."

"Fair enough," I said. "What about that second time you cornered the guy?"

"Followed him to an apartment building in the Presidium," he told me. "I found him walkin' down the hall. Didn't even bother to give him the 'come peacefully' spiel. Just ran at the guy. Bastard must've heard me though, because he turned around, looked at me, then started to run."

"He looked at you?" I asked. "But he didn't try to compel you?"

The big man shook his head. "Nah. But he did run into two other guys. Flashes them a look, and they just suddenly stop in the middle of the hall. I sprinted right into them, knocked me down. Vissarion took a side door, and was in the street and gone before I even had the chance to go after."

I leaned forward onto my desk, folding my hands in front of me in thought. "This guy can not only burst into someone's mind with nothing but a look, but can also do it to at least two people."

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. You know, at first, I thought I was just losing it. I mean, mind control isn't exactly normal, even for me. I've seen, done, and met weirdness before, but… Well, that just tops it, right?"

"Mind control isn't exactly easy to come by," I agreed. "What about that third time?"

Ryan shook his head. "Nothing all that weird about it. Followed the guy into a warehouse I knew was rented out by a few less-than-stellar people. Those guys don't really care what you do in there, just as long as they get paid." He refocused onto topic. "Anyway, I get to the warehouse, I go in, and I find him standing over this table lookin' thing. Must've heard me again, because he looked up at me, hissed out something, and then a freight train hits my back. I'm out before I even knew it. Woke up there, too." His brow furrowed in thought. "Actually, makes me wonder why he didn't just kill me. Would've been easy enough."

My eyes narrowed as a thought passed through my head. "The table thing you saw him standing over," I said. "Did you see anything that was on it?"

Ryan shook his head. "Nope. Got knocked out before I could."

"Was it there when you woke up?"

The big man thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, actually. Gone when I woke up." He looked at me in question. "Why?"

I gave him a frank look and leaned back against my chair. "It's the reason you're still alive. Whatever was on that table, it was more important to him that he take care of it rather than you. Count your lucky stars, man."

Ryan sighed, his arms finally dropping back to their sides, and he took a seat. "Yet _another_ pleasant thought. You really are just a bundle of fun, ain't you, Mikey?"

I blinked. "Mikey?" I asked.

That smile worked its way back onto his face again. "Hey, if it works, it works. So, anyway, as fun as story time is here, I think it best if I get to my point, yeah?"

I nodded. "Go ahead."

"The point is, I need help. This is a new kind of weird to me, and I need an expert on the stuff. If you really are a wizard, like your door says, then you know all about this stuff. Think you can help me track the guy down, get him back to C-Sec?"

"Definitely," I said. "This Vissarion guy is serious business, and apparently, he's take on some badass bounty hunter more than once, and got away with it. And he's responsible for a string of murders, you said?'

He nodded.

"Then, yeah," I went on. "Guy like that, and has that kind of ability? Definitely needs a wizard on the case."

Ryan's smile grew bigger at that, a gesture I returned, albeit with less gusto. "Alright," he said as he bobbed his head. "We should get started soon." His smile dropped. "And I suppose now would be a good time to mention that I have absolutely no lead on the guy. So, you should, you know, work some magic or something, and find the guy."

I looked at him blankly at that, then sighed. "Figures," I muttered. I looked back up. "Alright. I think I know a few place and people we can talk to to get this started."

The smile was back again. "Mikey. I can tell. This is the start of a beautiful partnership."

I gave him an amused look. "As far as introductions go, yeah, I've seen worse."

Ryan continued to beam at me. "Now come on. I make it a personal policy to never partner with I guy I've never shared a drink with." And with that, he stood up and strided towards the door, stopping just before he reached the threshold. He turned back and looked at me expectantly.

Yeah. Something told me I'd like this guy.

* * *

**Every story has a beginning. The beginning of this one isn't so much a beginning as it is a foreword, hence the title of the chapter.**

**Hey there. I'm ThatBlueScreenGuy, writer extraordinaire. Well, extraordinaire is a bit of a stretch, but you understand my point here. I'm the writer, and you lot are, quite obviously, the reader.**

**Not sure why I feel the need to point out the obvious. Just makes the cripplingly one-sided conversation awkward.**

**Anyway, I'm here to give something of an explanation as to just what this story is all about.**

**The point of this story is to be a dumping ground for prompts and ideas that come to my head in the moments when I should be focusing on much more important things, like schooling and sleep and sustenance. All the stories are going to be based around the concepts and ideas that reside within the main story I'm currently procrastinating on, ****_Arcane Effect: Life is Hard_****. All the characters come from there, and I highly recommend that you head over there if you like what you see here. You'll find that ****_that_**** story has a more singular story to it.**

**Actually, the procrastination thing reminds me. Sometimes I have crippling writers block. Sometimes it can take weeks to months at a time for me to get my mojo back. So this story, not only being a repository for silly little ideas, is also a place where I'm going to come to when I can't seem to get anything done. So that will be my excuse for why these stories, at times, might not seem to be of a similar quality than others. Often times the only way for me to get over writers block is for me to smash my head against the keyboard and hope that something coherent comes out.**

**Basically, this entire little project is for me to get myself back into the groove if I need it, by means of 100 prompts (yeah, 100 specifically. Found a nice little list on the interwebs for me to go through).**

**So, to summarize: The point of this story is so I can get back on the saddle when I get knocked off it, I'm using a list of 100 prompts to do so, and you're probably sitting there, looking at your computer/phone screen, wondering why you should care.**

**And, in fairness, that last one is a good question.**

**Anyway, I suppose I've rambled on for long enough now. If you're still interested, turn the metaphorical page and read on. I'll be here, in the background, pretending to be doing something that I should have gotten done a long time ago.**

**Oh, yeah, and as always,**

**Thanks For Reading!**

**~ThatBlueScreenGuy**


	2. Complicated

Asala knew that, every time Michael Blackstone became involved in a case, things would get complicated fast.

Generally speaking, Asala had a pretty simple job as one of the resident morticians on the Citadel. She'd wake up in the morning, come down to the morgue, and her boss would give her the corpse of the day for her to take a look at. She'd go to an exam room, take the next few hours to go through a thorough autopsy, and give the report back to her boss that, yes, the man _had _been stabbed twenty six times in the chest, or that no, there _wasn't_ any use of poison in that salarians drink, his heart just gave out. Whatever the autopsy said, Asala would give the report to her boss as quickly as she could while still being efficient at her job.

Sometimes, though, her job got a bit too political for her tastes.

Sometimes, there would be a stiff that her boss would hand down to her and tell her in too-subtle phrasing that he wanted a _specific_ answer to this case. That it would do the morgue and the departments attached, a great deal of good if this guy _had _been found murdered, that there was a case for C-Sec to jump on, or that the son of some ambassador, who just so happened to die from an overdose of narcotics, _hadn't _had a drug problem.

Usually, her boss would take cases like these, and he would find for himself the answer that he was looking for. But there were times that he couldn't, and in those cases, he shunted the duties off to Asala.

Those particular cases often took more than two days, seeing as the department head wanted Asala to do an even more thorough job than she normally did (as though they thought that she made up the answers for every other corpse that she's ever looked at).

Thankfully for Asala, corpses like that didn't come around too often, and when they did, they were rarely her responsibility. All she had to do was look through some junkies intestinal tract to see if the needle that was found in small intestine was swallowed down or forced up (five points to anyone who guesses the right answer).

Her job was nice and simple. FInd out how the dead guy on the table ended up like that.

But then, of course, there were the times that something so utterly _weird_ comes through the doors.

A prime example of this would be the first corpse that ever brought Michael down to the morgue. The corpse with practically every known disease ever raging through it.

At first, when that particular corpse had been placed on her exam table, she hadn't really known what to think of it. The first thing that she had noted at the time was the complete lack of head on the body, which ruled out any possibility of gaining a facial ID. The corpse was humanoid enough that the possibility of a fingerprint ID was on the table, but that was the other thing that couldn't be explained about the corpse.

Every square inch of the corpse was covered in boils, blisters, bruises, puss, and skin necrosis. Not a single part of the body was left untouched by _some _disease, and some areas even had diseases that couldn't be contracted in combination with one another because, if you were to get one of them, you'd be dead by the time it took you to travel across the galaxy to even be in the remote area of where the other disease might be, let alone the specific area of where the disease could be found, or the time that it took to actually contract the thing.

To say the autopsy of this particular corpse was a complicated thing would be an understatement. And when the results actually came back for exactly which diseases were infecting the body, the answer gave Asala only more questions.

And when the C-Sec official came down to the morgue to see just what was all the fuss about this one particular corpse was, Asala had no straight answer to give.

She had told the C-Sec official, in clear terms, that this body was an _impossibility_, that it shouldn't have even existed to begin with. There were diseases from so many different species, races, even animals, that to contract all of them, all at once like that, wasn't scientifically possible. There was a human blood cancer, a salarian liver disease, an asari lung infection, batarian cataracts, turian neurological disease, and even the damn genophage. That was only a part of the list. There was _more_ that Asala didn't tell the official, because, if she did, it would make her seem insane.

To make the situation even _weirder_, the C-Sec official didn't even blink at the report of the scientific anomaly. They just sighed, muttered something under their breath about, "That smarmy asshole, making me take that bet," and told Asala that C-Sec would send down a consultant to take a look at the body.

Asala was just made confused by that. What kind of consultant would be able to give _any _sort of advice about something like this? This would be the only recorded case of this many diseases in one place ever, and C-Sec was going to just send someone who probably had no scientific or medical background to take a look at something they had no professional experience with. Worse yet, they were probably going to _pay _the guy to come down to the morgue and just get in her way.

That's taxpayer money at work, that is.

Sometime later that day, a tall human male walked into her exam room, probably the consultant that C-Sec had sent her, and the first thing that she noticed as he entered the room was how different he seemed.

Not to say that he looked different from any other human that she had ever seen before. Dark, raggedy hair that seemed like it needed to be cut, strong features, particularly around the jawline, and dull green eyes that seemed to be both relaxed and attentive at the same time. He wore a dark blue jacket with a hood, simple denim jeans, and heavy boots of some kind. The bags around his eyes seemed to say that he got just barely enough sleep, but other than that, the man looked as normal as any other human that one might run across.

But there was something about him. Some simple feeling in Asala's gut that told her that there was a lot more to this man than anyone she had ever met. Something about his bearing, his presence, the simple way that he took in everything in the room like he could see more than she could.

Being near the age of three hundred, Asala like to think that she had fairly good intuition for a woman of her age. And her intuition was telling her that there was something fundamentally larger, more vast, about this human. As though he were a part of something, even representative of something intrinsically _more_ than anything that she had ever encountered.

And yet, despite the profound presence that the man gave off, the first words out of his mouth when he entered the exam room, after he had taken a look at the diseased corpse on the table, was, "Oh, yeah. That guy is thoroughly dead."

So, yes. Asala knew, just as well as anyone, perhaps even better, that when Michael Blackstone came into the picture, things got complicated.


	3. Making History

I stared down at the scorched and burned form of the Red Court vampire, as it thrashed around in pain and agony on the ground of some dirty alley in one of the more run down Wards of the Citadel. My face had set itself into a fierce scowl that I tried to convince myself was because of the acrid scent of brimstone and sulfur and blood that permeated the air around us. Blood trickled down my face as I rested a hand on the claw mark that had cut through the once-white-now-red shirt that I wore. The pain that coursed through my body at the touch only made my scowl deepen, and I decided, to Hell with it, and stomped my way towards the half disintegrated form of the vampire on the ground.

I reached into one of my front pockets, making sure to avoid moving my hurt arm too much. I took out a small glass vial from the pocket, brought the corked top to my mouth, and bit the stopper off. I stood over the crumpled form of the vampire, holding the vial precariously in my hand, threatening the monster with the liquid content inside.

"You know what this is, don't you?" I asked the vampire. And despite the pain that was running through my body, despite the blood caked on my face, and despite the desire the just collapse onto the ground and sleep until the next ice age, my voice sounded perfectly, dangerously calm.

The vampire looked up at me with its leathery bat face, it's pitch black eyes staring into mine. It's face was set in utter agony, faint embers still licking at its lower extremities, and nodded at me.

"From what I hear," I went on, "Red Court vampires and holy water don't exactly go well together. It would be an awful shame if you were to do something regretful, and die with this stuff tearing a hole through your face."

The vampire scowled at me, showing the tips of its red tinted fangs from inside its leathery lips. It hissed at me in anger, and when it spoke, it's voice came out to me as somewhere between a hissing screech and a throaty growl. "You are to kill me anyhow, _wizard_," it practically spat the word at me, as though it were some sort of old curse word. "Not if you wish to live yourself."

I bobbed my head in allowance. The thing wasn't wrong. If I let it go, not only would there be a vampire left to hunt me down later, but it could also convince it's buddies to help it try and kill me. And the last thing I wanted was more monsters that had a personal vendetta against me.

"Very true," I told the thing. "But your cooperation in the next few minutes could be the difference between a dagger to your brain," I held up said dagger, its ornate, wavy blade shining with firelight as the golden runes on the blade glowed with Hellfire, "and acidic holy water slowly burning its way through your skull." I shrugged. "Really the choice here is yours. I could go either way. All you need to do is answer a few pertinent questions, and this can be over quickly."

The scowl never left that hideous bat face of it's. It hissed again at me, and weakly swiped a clawed hand up at me, aimed for my stomach.

I took a small step back, dodging the weak blow, and didn't say a word as I stepped up next to the vampire, looked down at it's burned, backwards hinged, three toed foot, got a reverse grip on my dagger, and stabbed it straight in it's thigh. I poured more power down the length of the blade, and the soft glow that had emitted from the runes on the dagger suddenly flared with intense heat and fire, setting the inside meat and muscle (what was left there, anyway) ablaze with fire literally back by the powers of Hell.

The vampire started to scream, it's pitch so high that I winced at the tone of it and felt something hot and wet trickle down the side of my face from my ear.

Tightening the grip on my dagger, I snarled at the vampire, certain it could hear me over the sounds of it's own screeching. "Why did you attack me?" I snarled.

It kept it's screams up, but I could see a gleam of defiance somewhere in it's pitch black eyes.

My scowl deepened as anger shot through me, somehow dulling the pains that racked my body, and allowing my focus to be set purely on the fucking _thing_ that had _dared _to attack me in some dirty, backwater ass alley.

I poured even more energy into the dagger, and started to slice the blade up it's thigh, leaving a trail of embers and ash in the daggers wake. "_Why?!_" I snarled again.

More screams met my ears.

I snarled, moving to stand up, leaving the dagger inside the monster's leg. More anger ran through me, much more than I would have expected, and a thought from the back of my head made it's way into the forefront of my mind. "Fine," I growled to myself. "Could use the practice anyway."

Then I stepped up to the vampire's head, dumped the vial of holy water onto the it's only working arm, and grabbed the thing's face with my right hand in a vice grip. I ran my magic down through my arm and into the vamp's head, muttering, "_Mitt sinn, inn i din_," as I did.

And suddenly, there I was, inside the mind of a monster. I could feel it's presence inside it's mind trying to fight against me, but every push it made at me was met with shocks that racked it's body from the acid that burned at it's arm and the fire that burned at it's leg. Each jolt of pain that I could feel as phantom pains through the vampire that coursed through it's body broke it's concentration enough to the point where it wasn't even a real fight to dig through the thing's memories to find what I was looking for.

When I found it, yet another surge of rage coursed through me. I drew my awareness back into myself, pulling myself out of the monster's mind, and snarled down at the thing. It flailed weakly around, clearly much more scared of me than I was of it. It tried to flip onto it's distended stomach to try and crawl away from me, but I pushed it roughly back onto it's back with a foot, yanked my dagger out of it's leg, and slammed the tip of the blade down through the thing's forehead. The vampire fell limp in death instantly.

Killing the thing did nothing to satiate the anger, the rage, the hatred that I felt for the thing and all it's kind. The things they did, not just the feeding and the subjection of many a mortals free will, but the _death _they deal, to _children_, like that. To throw the world, and subsequently worlds, into chaos by dismantling the only thing that was strong enough to keep them in check, to keep them in line. It made me want to find them, find more of them, and _burn them, burn them all, show them just what it is they fight so hard against, search so fervently for, and why they should fear it._

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath through my nose, trying my best not to grimace at the smell of burnt leather and sulfur around me.

Calm. That's what I need. Calm. The fury of a wizard can be a great and terrible thing, but only if it is tempered with discipline and control, and it must be pointed in the right direction. The proper steps must be taken before my anger and terror can be let loose against them.

_Go over it,_ I told myself. _Review what you know. Think. Take action. Unmake them, their work. Don't just burn everything that angers you._

Review what I know. Right.

The Red Court of vampires, along with their cousins the Whites and the Blacks, were leading a campaign against humanity as a whole, to ensure that no mortal, no prey, has the means, motive, opportunity, and knowledge to ever fight back against them. To ensure that Mankind cannot rise against them, as they had in the past.

To do this, they hunt. But they're methodical, those vampires. More than a century and a half ago, there had been a war between the Red Court (aided by the others) and their biggest mortal enemies, the White Council. It had raged for years, and many lives were lost, most of which weren't even combatants to begin with. There had been many a fight, and when the dust finally settled, there had been little in the ways of adversity for the vampires.

The White Council had been torn asunder, most of their eldest and most powerful members dead, with a great deal of the younger members having their will taken from them and pressed into service as vampire thralls.

And in the absence of the White Council, the vampires as a whole saw an opportunity, one that they simply couldn't pass up.

They finally, after so many years of treading carefully, lest they be assailed by some well meaning fool, had the opportunity to cripple the greatest threat to them mortals ever had on their side.

The vampires had the means to hunt down and kill any and all children that showed enough magical talent to grow into a wizard.

For that was what the White Council had been. It was organized wizardry, a governing body for anyone who had the power to pose a threat to the likes of the vampires and any other various supernatural body. They were people like me. Wizards.

I had had a suspicion, ever since I had awoken the talent for magic within me, that I was one of the few practicing wizards left, if only because there hadn't been any others trying to contact me once I showed enough power to be a threat to those around me.

As time had gone on, and no White Council Wardens (the police force that had enforced the Laws of Magic) had come to me with thinly veiled threats, my suspicion had only grown. I had figured something had happened, but never something of this scale.

To methodically hunt and kill children, anywhere from the ages of ten to fifteen, who showed even the potential to be powerful enough to grow into a future threat was cold, even for vampires. I could only imagine how many families were left crushed and broken from the lose of one or more of their children.

The thoughts angered me. They angered me a whole Hell of a lot.

And they sent a pang of agonizing loneliness through my chest.

The life of a wizard can be a terribly lonely one, at times. The power that I have to wield at my fingertips is great, but very alienating. It's so weird and awesome that anyone who doesn't know what it is when they see it is often sent into a panic at the sight of me calling up a gale of wind or a torrent of fire. It makes them panic, makes them afraid. And the sight of seeing your fellow man afraid of you is the kind of thing that can make you bitter, if only a little. Hell, thanks to my magic, I can never look into the eyes of a fellow mortal, for fear of seeing their very _soul_ laid bare before me, and they seeing mine.

There could have been others just like me. Those that know, that feel, that live, what I've gone through. But they're killed before they could grow into such a thing. All for the sake of a bunch of monsters whose only reason for killing them is to ensure that their hold at humanities throat isn't contested.

Sirens sounding through the air drew my attention out of my thoughts. I look to the mouth of the alley way to see people walking past, trying to pretend that they don't see a blood covered man next to a body of a monster that they _know_ shouldn't be real.

I needed to leave, to get back to my office and clean up, get my arm dressed with bandages, maybe even some stitches. Even in this neighborhood, with as much crime that happens here, C-Sec isn't going to just ignore something like this. And someone is bound to have already made the call to them.

I reached down and yanked the dagger out of the vampire's head. Drawing forth my will, I hissed out a word to a veil to hide myself, and started to make my way back home.

As I did, thoughts started to race through my head, all of them related as to what just happened.

So, vampires are hunting those that have the slightest magical talent in them. No doubt they know about me and my skill, otherwise they wouldn't have sent that flunky after me.

Someone had to do something about their overwhelming control over the fate of humanity. But who was there? The Alliance? Not likely, given that they'd first have to accept the fact that monsters are real and they have a monopoly on human life. The Council? Even less likely, as they find humanity as a whole rather annoying.

So, who was there to stop a hundred and fifty year old conspiracy of death and subjugation?

Well, there's me.

I almost audibly snorted at the idea, feeling like I should ridicule myself for such an idealistic and unachievable idea. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea crystallized in my head.

It wouldn't be easy. It would take time, and I would have to make many an ally with some powerful people, people that I perhaps wouldn't deal with in any other circumstance. That's not even to mention the number of enemies that I would be making in doing this. the vampire Courts are hardly the only ones to benefit from the absence for organized wizardry.

But I could do it. It would take time, years perhaps. I would have to be careful, have to tread lightly. But it isn't impossible. I would be making history if I could pull this off.

It was then I swore to myself, by the very power that flowed through my body and mind, that I would, in my lifetime, bring modern wizardry back.

It wouldn't be easy. Nothing in life is.

Hell, I've said it before, I'll say it again. The only easy thing in life is dying.

* * *

**A/N: Ideas are complicated things.**

**They come and go as they please, often carrying the one who spawns them to all sorts of places where their creativity can shine and grow. But sometimes they take you somewhere, drop you unceremoniously, and leave you stranded with no idea as to where to go next.**

**That happened to me. And the worst part is that I knew it would happen at some point.**

**What I'm trying to say is that I lost my mojo for a while there, but now I'm hoping it's back in action, ready to take me to places that I can't even imagine would come from my own mind.**

**There is no excuse for long absences, especially when the real reason is as pathetic as the one that I have. But here we are, back in action. Hopefully, I can get back to writing for my main story, which I'm going to shamelessly self-plug right now (_Arcane Effect: Life is Hard_).**

**Let's hope.**

**And as always,**

**Thanks For Reading!**

**~ThatBlueScreenGuy**


	4. Rivalry

I let out a sigh of irritation as I glanced down at my watch, noting that Ryan was more than twenty minutes late to the meeting that _he _had set up.

I haven't the faintest clue as to what it was that he wanted, but when he had called my office and asked me to met him in one of the most public parks in the entire Ward, I had the feeling that it was rather important. I knew that Ryan didn't like overly large crowds. He didn't freeze up around large numbers of people, wasn't claustrophobic or anything of the like, but he did his best to avoid crowded places if he could. Told me once that it made him feel a bit on edge, to have so many people to try and watch out for.

I ran a hand through my hair, letting out a sigh as I leaned back against the bench I sat upon. I suppose there wasn't any real reason for me to be all that irked. It's not as though I had anything planned for myself. It was one of the few days off that I was allowed, though, since my job had a very erratic schedule, and while I was willing to lend any aid to Ryan that he needed, I would prefer to have gotten it over with as soon as possible, so that I could get back to the glorious nothing that I had been doing beforehand.

I glanced again at my watch, knowing before I even looked at it that no real time would have passed between now and when I had last looked at it a few moments ago. Boredom slowly crept into the forefront of my mind, and I started casting my eyes around, looking for something that could distract me. There was a group of three young women, college students, I thought, sitting on a bench some distance away. They were all rather pretty, and they talked animatedly with each other, smiles and laughs and general joy permeating their conversation.

A smile tugged at one of the corners of my lips as I watched them. They seemed so warm and happy, sitting there talking amongst themselves. I wondered if they would mind too terribly if I joined them. I mean, I doubt that Ryan would blame me for distracting myself while I waited.

One of the girls, a dark skinned beauty with a smile that was stunning, even from this distance, looked up and saw me watching the lot of them. Her smile gained an amused tilt to it as she turned to the others and said something to them, flicking a glance in my direction. The others looked up at me, all of them starting giggle as another girl, a girl with huge, almond shaped blue eyes that seemed to sparkle every time the light hit them, said something that seemed to amuse them all. Then the third girl, a young woman who wore a sweater that seemed to hide an absolutely lovely physique, called out, "Hey!" She made a waving 'come here' gesture with her hand.

My eyebrows started to climb up, and the smile that had been tugging at my mouth blossomed into a wide grin. I pointed at myself, as though asking if she was talking to me.

They all shared a collective laugh, and the one with the pretty eyes said, "Yeah! Come here!"

Well, I could hardly say no to the wonderful ladies, now could I?

I got up and started to make my way over to the three of them.

What occurred next happened fast.

No one who didn't know what they were looking for would've been able to see it. To the outside viewer, it would have looked like I tripped, fell, and started rolling down the nearby hillock, disappearing out of sight as I tumbled beneath a nearby bridge. For anyone who had no idea what just happened, it seemed as though a clumsy man took a fall, and it would all be very funny and embarrassing, and no one got hurt.

I, however, knew better.

I felt the hand that grasped my ankle as I walked past a shrubbery a mere moment before it ripped my balance out from under me, pulling me down towards the arch under the bridge at a speed far faster than what I could roll down a hill at. It wasn't breakneck speed by any standard, and no one who saw it would really notice any difference in the speed I fell, but I could feel it. Someone, or possibly some_thing_, was pulling me down and out of sight fast enough to get it done quickly, without attracting too much attention to it.

I felt the change in the air as I was dragged under the bridge, a slight chill nipping at my skin. I was dragged on my ass across the ground, where I was pressed up against the nearest wall, something pressing against my throat hard enough to make me let out an involuntary _glurch_ing noise. My head snapped back against the wall, making a flurry of stars invade my sight.

I blinked my eyes to get my vision back, and when I did, I was greeted with a face I didn't recognise.

The man stared at me with hate-filled dark eyes, his dirty blond shaggy mane of hair spilling down in front of his eyes. "Hello, wizard," the man snarled. "Remember me?"

I blinked at him for a moment, trying to search my memory to see if I did remember him. Eventually, I said, my voice hoarse from the pressure on my throat, "Uh. No?"

The man's eyes widened with more rage and hate at that, his left forearm pressing harder against my throat. a small point from what I could see out of my peripheral vision to be some homemade shiv pressing against the underside of my jaw with his right hand. "What?" He growled.

"No," I repeated, my eyes flicking down to the sharp pointy thing at my throat. "I don't remember you. Should I?"

The shiv pressed closer to some big vein in my throat. "You damn well should, you _fuck_. I'm going to _fucking end you_, and I want you to remember _why_."

"Actually," I said, "that's a good question. Uh, why are you doing this?"

The crazy ass's arms started to quiver with barely-contained rage, and I could tell that he was really looking forward to the moment he could stick that shiv into my brain or slice open my throat and let me bleed to death or something. "Oh, don't you dare pretend that you don't _know_. You can't have forgotten. I know you can't have." Then his voice changed, and he almost seemed to be muttering more to himself than me. "You _can't forget_. You need to _know_, damn it. You _need to_."

I shifted, stretching my right leg out as much as possible, my right hand dropping to the floor. "Hey, okay," I said, worry seeping into my voice. "Just tell me, give me hints, something. I've got a good memory. I''m sure that you can jog my memory." Keep him talking, Michael. Just keep him talking for a little while, then you're in the clear…

Something like hysteria started to color the man's words, and the shiv pressed even further into my neck, far enough that I knew that he would have drawn blood. "You _took her_ from me, you son of a bitch!" He was practically snarling like an animal, and it seemed like he was making a very conscious effort not to start shouting at me. "_You _were the only person to walk out of that warehouse. I _know _that. But she was there, and you were the only one. _The only one!_" For the briefest moment, he had failed to contain the shout of anger that had welled up in him, and the sound of it echoed painfully around the archway that we were under.

_Good_, I thought. _Start shouting. Draw attention to yourself. Gotta get more out of him if I wanna get out of this._

"Seriously, man," I told him. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. But I'm sure that we can work this out, what with your very persuasive argument of a shiv to my throat."

He gritted his teeth as he shook his head. "Oh, no, no. No words from _you_. He told me about your kind, how words are your weapons. He told me exactly what to do with you. Make it quick, he said, don't give him the chance to _say _anything."

Any hope that I had started to flee as I saw what he meant.

The best way to kill a wizard is to kill them without the wizard even knowing that the threat is there. This guy had the perfect opportunity to do that, but had wasted it to make sure that I knew who was killing me, even if I actually had no idea who he was. But the second best way to kill a wizard is to do it before they can _say_ anything.

Wizards use words of power to command magic. They don't have to, strictly, but the psychic feedback of not using the insulation of words is more trouble than it's really worth. If you can kill a wizard before they even have the chance to say anything, than you might as well just be killing any other mortal.

"No, no, no, wait, hold o-"

Then he started to thrust the shiv further into my throat.

Pain spiked through me, and I made some sort of gurgling sound as blood started to rush into my lungs. The pressure at my throat suddenly disappeared, and I fell forward, clutching at the hole in my neck, trying not to bleed out as I coughed up as much of the blood as I could.

My vision started to go black when I felt broad, strong hands grab at my shoulders. I tried to fight against them, but being stabbed in the throat has a way of taking the fight out of you.

"Mikey," a familiar voice came to me calmly. "Mikey, it's me. Mikey, you need to move your hand so I can apply the medigel."

I threw my eyes up and say the dark skin and handsome features of Ryan, dressed in what I knew were to be his, as he called them, 'civvies.' I then immediately let go of the hole in my throat.

Ryan's omnitool glowed its bright orange glow, and I felt the cold gel of the bio-adhesive cling to my skin. Of course, the wound at my neck was sealed for now, but that didn't exactly mean much to the fact that there was still a good amount of blood in my lungs. So I spent the next three minutes or so just spitting up globulets of blood onto the ground.

I felt Ryan pat my back reassuringly as I essentially sat on my hands and knees vomiting blood. "It's okay, Mikey," I heard him say. "Just let it all out. You're good now."

As the last spittle of blood hit the floor, I look up at him and say, "You're late." My voice was croaky, and it hurt to speak.

He rolled his blue eyes, but was smiling anyway. "Sorry. Ran into traffic. But you can't argue with my timing at the moment, can you?"

I scowled at him. "Shut up, dick."

His smile just widened. "Now, come on, Mikey. Time to get up." He looked over his shoulder, off in the distance where the guy who just shanked me probably ran. "The guy ran off, but I doubt that we should wait up incase he decides to come back."

I nodded, rising to my feet with his help. "Yeah. Yeah, that's probably smart."

We started to make our way out from under the bridge and up the little hillock that I had fallen down. As we crested the top, I could see those college girls still sitting on their bench, although they looked much more worried, what with them watching a man collapse down a hill then come back up with a slice at his throat. They looked just as lovely as they had before, but I suddenly wanted nothing more than to just head home and take a nap, rather than enjoy their undoubtedly pleasant company.

Ryan started to lead me in the direction of a rented cruiser that was parked off to the side of the park, and he turned an eye to me. "So, who was that ass, anyway?"

"Don't know," I responded. My voice still didn't sound exactly healthy, although the twinge of pain that went off when I spoke was lessened than it had been before. "But he seemed to know me. Had beef with me, even."

Ryan grunted. "Got any idea what he's talking about?"

I shook my head. "No. Might be he's the only one who sees the issue between us."

"So, he might be crazy."

I smiled a little. "Well, I thought that was a given." Then I noticed something off about Ryan. Whenever we met up so I could help him out with a job oh his, he almost exclusively came in his party gear- that being a hardsuit, an assault rifle, and a pistol at his hip. Today, he was wearing a dark tee, worn jeans, and sneakers that were no doubt easy to run in. It had been a while since I had seen my friend in such casual clothes.

My brow furrowed even more as a scent hit my nose. "Wait," I said suddenly. "Are… Are you wearing cologne?"

The easy-going smile on Ryan's face faltered for the briefest moment, then it was back in full force. "Yeah. That's- That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You said you wanted to talk about a job."

He rubbed the back of his neck as we got up to his cruiser. He opened the side door, where he got in, then shimmied over to the far seat, giving me the room to hop in as well. I did as I heard him say, "Yeah… Might've lied about that."

As I settled in my seat, my narrowed eyed suspicion didn't waver in the slightest. "Ryan. Why did you call me today?"

"So… There's this girl…"

My head immediately fell forward and smacked against the dashboard. A groan worked its way out of my throat, and an almost bitter thought passed through my mind.

_Ugh. Girl troubles. Think I'd rather be back with that nutjob with a shiv at my neck._

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**A/N: I do so love prompt writing. Helps keep the juices flowing, as it 'twere.**

**Anyway, this is the point of the chapter that I remind you that this is just a companion story to my main one, _Arcane Effect: Life is Hard_. So, go check it out, if you want. I like to think that it isn't utter shite.**

**And as always,**

**Thanks For Reading!**

**~ThatBlueScreenGuy**


	5. Reincarnation

It was almost ritual. Every single morning, I woke up and, with the assistance of a very helpful and kind nurse, made my way into the bathroom of my hospital room. And as I always did, the moment that the lights turned on and I could see the reflection in the mirror, I flinched at the sight.

It wasn't an ugly sight, I don't think. It's not as though I see what was in the mirror and I'm ashamed of what's there. I don't hate the look, I don't think anything that I see in that mirror is something that I need to hide myself from.

It just isn't _my _face.

Hell of a statement, isn't it?

But I suppose you find yourself saying all sorts of odd things when you've died in a fire and are reincarnated into another universe, using another grown man's body.

It's still an odd thing, even after a few weeks. And it happens every day.

Wake up.

Get nurse's help.

Go to bathroom.

Wait for light to turn on.

See mirror.

Flinch.

It doesn't feel right, having spent my entire life up until now looking in the mirror and seeing a completely different face than the one that stares at me nowadays. It somehow seems… Wrong. Stealing, almost.

It was a nice face, all things considered. Perhaps the features were a little too tired looking to be outright handsome, but the man who stared back at me had long, dark hair, and dull green eyes that belied an that seemed to sparkle with intelligence and heat. Not at all a bad face. Just not the one that had been mine.

Except, now it was.

Stolen from a dead man.

Well. Dead man was a relative term. The body was still alive, being held that way on the various advanced life support systems that the galaxy's greatest medical professionals attended to, to ensure that someone woke up in that body. They couldn't have expected that the original owner of the body had decided he would rather move his soul onto What Comes Next, rather than wait for a time when he could wake up again.

The body lived. The mind behind it died.

And then I came along. Freshly dead myself, afraid and confused. I struck a deal with an archangel to give me my life back, completely unaware that I would essentially be stealing another man's skin and walking around in it.

I mean, did the original Michael Blackstone have family? Friends? Co-workers? Someone who would miss him when he was gone, someone who would rejoice when he woke back up? The doctors tried to find any next of kin for Michael when he had first fallen into the coma, but they were unable to find anyone. No one to visit, no one cry at night because their son or brother or boyfriend wouldn't wake up and wasn't ever likely to.

Maybe that was a small blessing. I mean, how would those people react when they saw the person they loved up and moving again, only to find out that he was practically a different person who didn't know any of them. Completely unaware that it in fact _was _a completely different person who had no idea who they were.

That would mean, though, that Michael Blackstone had been utterly alone when he had died.

I can't tell if it's a silver lining or a grey cloud.

Not as though it mattered much. He was dead.

But that still left me with the guilt.

Did he consent to letting his body be taken for a joy ride by some random guy? Did he refuse? Did Uriel cut him a deal too, as payment for letting me take his body? Was he upset at me for taking what wasn't ever mine?

I had a lot of questions. I had no answers.

I don't think I would get any. Not in this life.

The next? Well, maybe I'll meet him at the bar, wherever he is, and ask. Who knows? I might even forgive myself by then.

But not today. Not now. Now, I just felt bad. Uncomfortable.

Like a man in the wrong body.

Reincarnation, man. Who knew it made one ask so many questions.


	6. Unbreakable

Generally speaking, I love being a wizard. It's great. All the power of the world at my fingertips, the knowledge and insight that most mortal men could only dream of having, the interesting people, places, and creatures that you get to meet. It's quite the life, living as a wizard in a world of science and reason. To go and turn the world upside down simply because I thought it needed to be that way was a rush, no matter how arrogant it might have been. I wasn't going around and abusing my power or anything, but the stunned look on people's faces when something not entirely normal happens is always priceless.

Of course, like everything, there were days that being a wizard straight up sucked. Days where, no matter my power, I was helpless at the hands of whatever evil nasty decided today was a good day to make men and women into snacks. Days where I'm not fast enough, not smart enough, not strong enough to be able to stop the monsters from taking children into the dark. Days when there is nothing I can do for someone who is utterly doomed because of some magical, mystical, or just weird happening that I can do nothing about.

Today was one of those days.

Today, the next regret that would haunt me for a good long while came in the form of a young woman. A young woman who had decided to hang herself rather than live with the terrible things that had happened to her.

I stared up at her hanging corpse, looking at the bloated and blotchy features of what had once been a beautiful woman. Something along the lines of regret and pure anger at myself coursed through me. The regret for not being able to do anything and letting such a beautiful life come to an end, and the anger for letting not being able to_ do anything, goddamn it_, and letting another person _get taken by the monsters, those sons of bitches._

Angelica Renfield had once been a bright girl in her early to mid twenties. She used to have long blond hair that reached the small of her back, stormy grey eyes that had used to glow with joy, and lovely and lush features that would have made any man fall over himself just to get her attention.

She didn't anymore.

She was dead now. Because there wasn't a single damn thing that I could do about it.

I stared at her face, the anger inside me starting to overflow and drown out anything that I might have otherwise felt. If I weren't so damn sad, I might have lashed out at something right then and there. I didn't though. All I did was stare at her hanging body, committing every detail to my memory. I wanted to remember this day for a very long time. She dangled from the ceiling lifelessly as I looked on, those empty eyes looking both back at me and directly at nothing at the same time.

"Angelica," my voice quivered into the silence. "Please… Don't- Don't do this. You can't. You're so much stronger than this. Please, _don't_."

Angelica stared back at me and back at the nothing all at once.

You see a human body, no matter how many times, and you expect it go do something. To twitch, to blink, to breath, because that's what humans do. I stared at Angelica for a long, long while, the unbreakable will inside me slowly shattering at the sight of the beautiful, vibrant soul that lost itself to the dark.

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to crawl into a ball and cry until I had no more tears to cry ever, and then I wanted to find the fucking thing that made her do this and rip its _fucking guts out and make it choke on them as I shoved them down it's fucking throat._

I didn't do any of that, though.

I just stood there and stared. What else could I do? She was gone. There was no one to save anymore. The thing that did this got away. It would keep on doing what it did, hunting and killing and eating like the monsters of the dark always did, and there was nothing I could do about-

No.

Enough of this nihilistic bullshit.

I couldn't do anything? I was a fucking _wizard_. I had more ability and more power in my one hand than most men could ever dream of having.

I could do nothing? No. I could do _anything_.

I will find this thing, and I will make it _burn_.

I stared at Angelica for a long minute more, the tears that wanted to fall suddenly burning up in the heat of the rage the boiled inside me.

"I'll find it, Angelica. It will never do this again. I will _find it_."

And then I turned and left the shabby little apartment, the unbreakable will within me hardening into steel.

Something was going to _burn_.


End file.
